From the filmmakers behind Man On Wire, James Marsh and Simon Chinn, comes the story of Nim the chimpanzee.
Nim was born in November 1973 in a cage at a research centre. Days later his mother is tranquilised and Nim is taken and given to his new mother, a psychology graduate with 3 children of her own. Within a few months Nim is communicating through sign language and develops a vocabulary of over 120 words but his animal nature still fares strong.
Project Nim addresses the controversial debate of Nature vs Nurture in a most unusual way. According to director James Marsh “We don’t really want to reveal too much of the narrative ahead of people seeing the film. There are some big surprises in the story – in fact shocks – and I’d love people to discover and respond to those when they see the film itself. We tell the whole story of Nim’s life and, while it starts out as an interesting interface between chimpanzees and humans based on living together and communicating, it spirals into a whole other realm that I don’t think anyone would be able to predict. It’s quite a ride for our chimp and, I think, for our audience.”
Project Nim will open in cinemas across Ireland Friday 12th August 2011.
Movie synopsis:
In the 1970s Nim became the focus of a landmark experiment which aimed to show that an ape could learn to communicate with language if raised and nurtured like a human child.
Following Nim’s extraordinary journey through human society, and the enduring impact he makes on the people he meets along the way, the film is an unflinching and unsentimental biography of an animal we tried to make human. What we learn about his true nature – and indeed our own – is comic, revealing and profoundly unsettling.
